The Ipster.Contradiction.QED.

Have you ever wondered what GIF abbreviates? Graphics Interchange Format? Don't be fooled, as there is a single exception that resides in the context of the so-called "Internet Explorer". Indeed, in this particular extremity, GIF refers to the Grand Information Fuckup.

I am sick and tired of people without the vaguest knowledge of the internets asking me to design a website. Sure, it can potentially count as extra revenue if there is the slightest hint of a possibility that they would even be willing to pay for it, but the sheer frustration of working with imbecile nobodies is highly demanding, even for someone with the patience of a saint and the gift of selective hearing (or interpretation in general, for that matter).

I have had a project on my hands for the past year or so - no names here - of which I have relented to push on with, as there was a serious lack of communication between both parties in terms of what was wanted (there was no specification, no price negotiation upfront, not good), and I basically didn't know what I was supposed to do. Even so, I made something out of what I was given (I was told to build a framework, whatever that means), and after getting a shitload in my face about how long it took, and having the worth of my hard-spent hours banging the squares on my keyboard reduced to a pittance, I have one last demo to give before handing over the work.

Naturally, IE was (still is, always will be...) a serious itch in the backside, and wasn't helping. Seeing as my homebuilt MVC platform (not strictly MVC anymore, due to time constraints ;) ) partially runs off browser content-type negotiation, it annoys when IE decides to send image/gif as the default content type that it prefers to receive (image/jpeg, image/pjpeg following). Not helpful when you're trying to serve an XHTML document (which it can't parse properly anyway), but at least an HTML mime type fallback would have been nice.

All the IE8 novelty with all these new features like 'Web slices' and 'Web accelerators' may sound fancy, but it doesn't mean anything to a developer unless it gets the basics right and adheres to simple standards (no, making your own Microsoft-only standards doesn't count), which can't be that difficult to implement if all other browsers on the market have done it yonks ago. I really do wonder whether the IE development team do any user testing, or if they do, whether being a complete eejit is a requirement to satisfy in order to be allowed to sit at the desk.